


you crawled out of the [ ]

by hellbeast



Category: One Piece
Genre: Barely Canon Compliant, Gen, Other, Trafalgar Law: Walking Disaster
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2019-08-19 15:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16536971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellbeast/pseuds/hellbeast
Summary: “Ah,” Law says, lowly, after a moment. He blinks, so slow and painful-looking that Mugiwara’s eyes start to water in sympathy. “Nico-ya, there’s someone you’d probably like to meet.”(or, Law makes nakama with an eldritch horror from the depths of the void century (a where and not a when) and barely acknowledges everyone else’s existential terror over it, because he’s Trafalgar Law, walking human disaster)





	1. i: the terror from the deep

One of the first things Law taught himself to do was identify biochemical compounds and draw them out with a neat Room-Shambles combo. There were a lot of applications for that kind of technique—it was easy to adapt for poison extraction or isolating foreign entities in blood—but his motivations at the time were purely self-serving. He has the crew come around to the medical bay once a month, and he draws out the excess hormones from whoever’s got third watch, before sending them back to bed. He keeps the phials of serotonin and dopamine tucked into a pouch, and he gives that pouch to Beppo.

“Captain?” Beppo asks, wary. He takes them, though. He knows Law usually has a reason, however convoluted.

“If I look like I’m about to start screaming, or collapse or something, hand me one of those.” Law tells him, from behind his copy of _Mercy’s Illustrated Medical Encyclopedia, Vol. 12, 7th Edition_.

The thing is, Law _wants_ to sleep; enjoys it, even. The problem isn’t that he puts off sleeping in lieu of researching, or anything like that. The _problem_ is that Law’s subconscious has never moved on from that day on Minion Island, and it is desperate to remind him of the way Cora-san’s blood tinged the snow red and pink, the way his hands shook, the way Joker’s grin curled up into cruel angles.

So. Law doesn’t sleep much.

After Cora-san, on his own, it only took him a couple months to work out that he could get three hours at most before he found himself gasping into consciousness, fingers hooked like claws and the world tinged Room-blue. That’s why he sleeps in the operating theater, more often than not: less of a risk of accidentally separating someone’s limbs or compromising the sub’s systems. The crew learns very quickly to leave waking their captain to Beppo, who drapes his warm, furry hide across Law and tells him to get up off his lazy ass.

(The others aren’t quite sure _why_ this works. If any of them every mustered up the courage to ask—and if Law ever deigned to tell—the answer would be something like this: Law’s memories are tangles and snarls of pain and fear and hurt and loathing.

Cora-san had been a blessing and an object lesson all in one—the only source of light, of good in Law’s life after Flevance—and Law will never be able to atone for his death, but nothing about that entire (clusterfuck of a) situation had been _warm_ or _safe_.

Beppo sprawls across him like a living blanket, and his voice is soft and measured, and even Law’s shitty subconscious can’t mistake it for anything else.)

Sometimes, as he’s lying in bed with his hair sweat-slicked to the curve of his skull and his teeth clenched so tight that his molars ache, Law fears finally killing Joker. He’s not afraid of the man—fuck no, he **hates** Joker—but Law wonders what he’ll do with himself, after. Because these days Law isn’t so much a person as he is a walking mass of enmity and vengeance, and without something to aim for—without Joker to kill—he might just… fall apart. Waste away.

The Cautionary Tale of the Ope Ope no Mi, Cora-san, he thinks sardonically. Don’t feed your all-powerful Akuma no Mi to bitter, hateful little kids who are only living day to day out of sheer fucking spite.

* * *

Screaming isn’t the norm on the Polar Tang, but even as Law startles awake—one hand gripping Kikoku and the other ready to twist—it takes a moment for him to dredge up even the faintest hint of alarm.

There’s quite a good deal of shouting, Law notes as he ambles into the kitchen at a stiff-legged stagger. Penguin has hit that piercing, shrill octave that preludes an argument. Or Law putting pieces of everyone into timeout while Beppo tries to help him stave off another migraine.

Law reaches the coffee press and is pleased to find an obscenely large mug of coffee already waiting, still hot to the touch. Beppo is a saint.

Law takes a deep inhale and then starts guzzling it down without pause. He’s long since numbed his throat and lips to the sensation of being burned. God, he’s placebo’d himself right to hell. If they ever stop trading cacao beans, then the fact of Law’s true zombie-like natural disposition will come to light with an alarming swiftness.

He inhales the rich scent of coffee mid-sip, and ducks a plate that sails overhead before smashing into the wall right above the sink. The shards fall into the sink itself with neat little _clinks_.

“ _Captain!_ ” Beppo is screaming. Still screaming. It’s just. Law actually feels human enough to acknowledge it now.

Law lowers his empty coffee mug from his mouth and then blinks. He blinks again, for good measure.

The kitchen is pitch black.

When Law first considered commissioning a submarine instead of the standard fare sea vessel, he did extensive research into the effects of light deprivation and vitamin deficiencies and anything else he could think of. And so, Law paid an ungodly sum of (stolen) money to have the artificial lighting rigged up. The techs had been really excited about it; light-refraction blah blah, sunlight emulation, blah blah. There’s a reason he usually leaves those kinds of things to Beppo.

Point is, it shouldn’t be dark. He _paid_ for it to not be dark.

“The hell is this.” Law demands. It’s not surprising that he could navigate the kitchen by muscle memory alone, down to detecting a mug of coffee so judiciously supplied by his first mate, but goddamn it, Law would at least liked to have believed that he would’ve noticed the lights thing _first_.

“It came out of nowhere—” Beppo tells him.

“—all these fuckin’ _teeth_ —” Penguin howls.

“— _ **starin’**_ at me, Cap’n!” Jean Bart snarls, and Law can hear the _bite_ to it.

Law blinks.

Aaand the lights are back.

He almost dismisses it as his crew having a major breakdown over a faulty light, but then his brain beckons him to do another head count.

Jean Bart. Penguin. Beppo. Shachi, who has apparently been unconscious on the ground this entire time.

A ten foot tall writhing mass of shadow and malice.

Law squints. The… thing stares back. Possibly. It ripples and wavers like a reflection on troubled waters. Law sees a lot of eyes, but those are also mouths. Looking at it starts to physically pain him, the kind of eye strain and nausea he gets from reading for hours on end before Beppo reminds him that eating is a thing.

It looks vaguely human-shaped. Like an abstraction of ‘human’ by something that has only ever seen ‘human’ from a distance, or under the influence of hallucinogens. It has at least two arms, and one head, but again, there are a lot more orifices than his brain can comprehend, and everything keeps shifting. There may or may not be a tail. Claws, perhaps.

“Huh.” He grunts. He stretches one arm out behind him, groping blindly. When it’s obvious that he’s not reaching for Kikoku, Beppo sighs and hands him another cup of coffee.

Beppo is a saint. Patron Saint of Coffee.

Law gulps down his second wonderfully scalding cup of coffee, and continues to stare at the whatever-it-is that’s invaded his sub.

“So, what the fuck.” He poses, not quite questioning, once he’s done with the coffee. Shachi—who was perhaps not so much unconscious as he was playing dead—and Penguin look somewhere between terrified and defensive, and Beppo’s fur is standing on end.

Jean Bart and Penguin start yelling again. Now that he’s cognizant enough to bother with paying attention, Law quickly gathers that the thing showed up, out of nowhere, and then while everyone was panicking—rightfully so, considering that they’re two and half leagues deep and moving at a steady pace—it… disseminated, or exploded or something, and cloaked the entire room in darkness, which might’ve actually been the thing itself, formless.

Right.

“I’m going back to sleep.” Law says.

“ _Captain_.” Shachi and Penguin hiss in unison, shooting fearful looks at the thing.

Right. _Right_. Captain responsibilities or whatever.

Law jabs one finger out sharply, and the thing ripples-wavers to attention. He would almost call it startled, if it wasn’t standing—looming? floating?—there, radiating a dense, almost tangible aura of casual and messy violence.

“Do **not** eat my crew _or_ my ship.” He tells it. Beppo makes a low, aggrieved noise that Law graciously ignores.

Then he puts his mug in the sink, grabs Kikoku and goes the fuck back to bed.


	2. ii: this could've all been a-[ ]-ed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Law asks the thing to go away.
> 
> The thing laughs in his face.

When Law wakes up again, he’s pretty close to suffocating under the thick press of Beppo’s fur.

“Guh,” he spits, already knowing that the feeling of hair on his tongue is going to bother him all day, if not for the rest of the week.

“You’re a terrible captain,” Beppo informs him sagely. “That creepy thing is still in the kitchen, and Penguin has been crying for three hours.”

Law grunts; not in acknowledgment, but in strain as he tries to shift Beppo’s giant, furry arm off his bare chest.

“Jean Bart locked himself in the armory. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that we don’t have any explosives. And I’m not sure what Shachi is doing, but we should probably be concerned—”

“Beppo, your fur is making me want to flay my own fucking skin off,” Law interrupts.

“Sorry.” Beppo pauses, finally lifting his gargantuan limb away. “But Captain, please do something about that thing.”

That’s what Law likes about Beppo; he takes all of Law’s weird shit—his terrible life choices, his sensory issues, his neuroses, pretty much his fucking _everything_ —and just rolls with it. Law’s skin is still gray-mottled from the Amber Lead Syndrome, even if it didn’t kill him, and there are days when he just… can’t touch anything, not without wanting to climb out of his own epidermis. Which, that’s probably a thing he could do, but it would kill him, and he’s not allowed to die until he knows for certain that Joker is going with him.

But that’s not currently relevant, because—

“I dunno what you want me to do about it, Beppo.” This is a lie. Law knows _exactly_ what Beppo wants him to do, and they both know it.

“Maybe ask it to go away?” Beppo suggests, because for some reason, he never calls Law out on his bullshit.

So Law does. He asks the thing to go away.

The thing laughs in his face.

Or, well. It doesn’t make any noise—which is worse, somehow—but its shoulder-like appendages shake and not-flesh peels open and away and gaping holes grow teeth and curl into open-mouthed grins.

Beppo, unwilling witness to the display, makes a strangled noise of discomfort.

Law’s temples are throbbing. It’s just the three of them—him, Beppo and the thing—in the operating theater, because Penguin is still staring into the middle distance and crying in the kitchen. Law, for the record, would desperately like to knock himself unconscious.

“Fine,” he grunts, once the thing stops not-laughing. A hand—no, wait, multiple hands—lift to cover quirked not-lips coyly. “If you’re not leaving, at least stop terrorizing the crew.”

Which is how Law and his crew acquire some demonic creature that probably crawled its way up from the center of the planet. Nobody’s happy about the arrangement, obviously. Shachi and Penguin have reached a state of catatonic terror and Jean Bart is doing something with chemicals that Law is probably better off ignoring. Beppo can’t quite frown, but the downward pull of his mouth is apparent either way.

Honestly?

Law just wants to get some fucking sleep.

* * *

Law hates Sabaody.

It’s not the noise, or the crowds, or even the presence of the Marines lingering like the odor of a sun-baked, bloated corpse.

It’s _them_.

“You! You there, stop!”

Law keeps walking, fingers curled tight around his belt loops. He had the forethought to give Kikoku to Beppo, but unless he leaves his own hands in a box somewhere, he’s still armed.

… Cora-san would’ve laughed at that, even if Law hadn’t meant for it to be a pun.

He would’ve laughed, and then probably fallen off of something or tripped over nothing. Caught fire. Screamed that high-pitched, over-exaggerated shriek that had always made Law’s lips twitch up into a small smile, because it was such an _absurd_ noise to hear out of someone who was ten feet tall and smoked like a goddamn chimney—

…Fuck.

 _Fuck_.

“Stop! I say, stop!”

“Captain…” Beppo murmurs from behind him. He’s right. Law knows he’s right.

He stops walking. He ignores the sound of feet coming up behind them, the sound of strained breathing.

“What a marvelous specimen, you’ve even got it trained!” The voice says. “How much for it?”

Law’s fingers twitch. Beppo clutches Kikoku closer like a lifeline, but says nothing.

Law turns his head, just enough to get a glimpse of the Tenryuubito piece of shit that he could dissemble into a million infinitesimal pieces and scatter across the entirety of the goddamn Grand Line—

“Captain.” Beppo whispers.

“Not for sale,” Law says, instead of letting his fingers curl and twist the way he so desperately wants them to.

The Tenryuubito’s vapid smile falters. Law wants to kill him. Law wants to _destroy_ all of them.

“Come now,” the Tenryuubito tries again, with a hesitant chuckle. “Money’s no object. How much for the bear?”

“I don’t know,” Law bites out, lips pulled back to bare teeth in a way he’d unconsciously picked up from Beppo. “How much is your life worth?”

“Captain,” Beppo cuts in, sounding more resigned than alarmed.

The Tenryuubito is too busy stuttering and blustering to form any words. Beppo jabs Kikoku’s hilt into Law’s back, and yes, fine, he can take a heavy-handed hint.

He’s been working on this; trying to refine it, perfect it, and he can’t help the twinge of pride that he feels when the opaque blue of the Room slides over the two of them like thick liquid, and then they’re gone.

Although.

It would be a more impressive gesture, Law thinks, if he hadn’t warped them straight into the fucking _Auction House_.

“Captain, just _**sit**_ ,” Beppo commands, shoving him into a seat. When Law just slumps there, unresponsive, the bear huffs and shoves Kikoku into Law’s hand.

With a blink, Law tucks the nodachi into the crook of his arm, and folds his fingers lattice-tight under his chin, so he won’t… _unexist_ this entire part of the archipelago, or something. He lets his vacant stare fall somewhere into middle distance and tries his best to ignore whatever is happening onstage.

Sometimes he wonders why he even bothers to leave the Polar Tang. No chance of him violently disassembling the ruling class if he never leaves his ship.

From somewhere behind him, he hears his own name. When he glances in that direction, Eustass Kidd leers at him, wide-eyed and provoking. Peering over his shoulder is the bright-eyed face of Monkey D. Luffy.

Law has had a shit day. Hardly anyone knows about the Ope Ope no Mi—it’s not like the Marines would ever admit that they _lost_ the damn thing, and to him of all people—and Law has more or less willingly put himself on an island full of Tenryuubito and Marines, for some godsforsaken reason. Law has had a _really shitty day_. He idly wonders how Kidd would like to permanently switch bodies with a Den Den Mushi. That Law would then crush beneath his fucking heel.

“Captain, please don’t.” Beppo sighs from beside him, without even looking.

Fine. Only because Beppo asked.

Law bares his teeth into another threat-not-smile and puts every iota of his being into flipping Kidd off.

* * *

**[Hey.]**

Law groans and briefly considers smothering himself with a pillow. Sure, it sounds appealing, but in practice, he’d probably only succeed in irritating his skin and pissing himself off.

Blearily, he lifts his head and scowls. At the world, in general.

It’s the thing. Of course it’s the thing. The thing currently looks the most human it ever has: its skin is smooth and deep like the night sky, the dark brown-black only broken by the whites of its eyes—and that’s still at least three eyes too many—and the flash of white teeth from inside a mouth the color of dried, flaking blood. It’s gotten better with limbs, he notes absently. Only two arms this time, and those actually look like _human_ legs, for once.

“What’re you all dressed up for?” He asks, dragging one hand down his face in hopes of kickstarting his brain.

The thing grins at him; Law’s general indifference seems to amuse it, and the fact that Law treats it like people even more so. It laughs, and there are suddenly far too many mouths, gleaming teeth and lurid blue tongues blazing out like a cross-stitch pattern, many throats all humming and buzzing soft, deadly noises as it pulses forward, closer to Law. Even with the right configuration of limbs to body, it still moves more like a coil of muscle, like flowing water, rather than something limited by the constraints of gravity and spacial awareness.

 **[We got a When to be,]** it informs him.

“Shouldn’t you be bothering Shachi or Beppo then?”

The thing shrugs, a roll of its entire body in lieu of just its shoulders.

**[Too much screaming.]**

That’s not true.

… That’s not _entirely_ true.

Beppo seems to have decided that discretion is the better part of valor and has resorted to just never looking at the thing. He’ll talk to it, but he refuses to look anywhere near it. Jean Bart, Shachi, and Penguin—on the other hand—are still fighting tooth and nail against the thing’s existence, and resort to threats or crying or a combination of the two, respectively.

Law isn’t any braver or any more daring than the rest of his crew, when it comes to interacting with… whatever the thing actually is. What Law _is_ , is perpetually exhausted and deeply embittered. Despite the surreality of the situation, he just doesn’t have it in him to react with screaming or even a sense of surprise. Law honestly can’t remember the last time he felt an emotion that wasn’t some variation of weary anger.

Law pushes himself up to his elbows and sighs. The lights are currently on the night cycle simulation and everything is cast in soft, calming blue shadow. In its usual contrary fashion, the low lighting only makes the thing look even more sinister as it ripples and hovers before him.

“Okay,” Law decides, running a hand over the rough stubble of his jaw. “When are we going?”

 **[Marineford. In five suns,]** the thing answers. Law can’t help but raise an eyebrow; up until this point, the thing had seemed content to lurk around like a haunting specter. To be honest, Law would’ve assumed the thing didn’t even know where it was, geographically speaking. That it knows about—and wants to travel to—Marineford on a specific day is… interesting.

By which he means alarming.

“What are you gonna do at Marineford of all places?” Law finds himself asking, curious despite himself.

The thing grins, bright teeth blooming into eyes with swirling pupils, flowing back and forth again, all eyes-and-teeth.

**[Gonna fuck shit up.]**

* * *

Marineford is a nightmare.

“Captain, why do you do this,” Beppo demands flatly, his exasperation draining the words of any inflection. He looks so aggrieved that Law almost feels bad, but going to Marineford wasn’t even his idea in the first damn place.

If he had known that they were sailing into the next _**War**_ , he… probably still would’ve shown up. Shit.

Beppo is right. Why _does_ he do this.

There are Generals and Admirals and gods know what else, along with just about every Whitebeard Pirate that’s ever earned a bounty, a bunch of escaped convicts from Impel Down, and Old Man Whitebeard himself. Hell, the situation is already far more bellicose than any other Pirate-Marine clash in recent history.

And in the middle of it all, Monkey D. Luffy and Portgas D. Ace stand back to back, united against the world.

Brothers, apparently.

“Why are we here?” Law growls, tightening his grip on Kikoku.

The sea beneath them starts to froth and shift and shit, it’s probably Aokiji, how did he get that close—?

But then the waves part and a deep black mass rolls up and Law realizes, no, it’s not Aokiji. It’s just the thing.

 **[Told you,]** the thing chuckles. Marines are screaming. Pirates are cursing. Law sees a couple people go down, bleeding from the eyes and ears. **[Gonna fuck shit up.]**

The thing says this casually, as though it hasn’t grown—or spread—to some forty feet, towering over the entirety of Marineford like a bad fucking omen.

“And you needed me to get here?” Law demands skeptically. While the thing has remained aboard the Polar Tang and showed little interest in leaving, the fact that it’s now forty feet tall and billowing across the water easy as anything, Law doubts that it couldn’t have gotten to Marineford on its own. Probably faster, too.

 **[Nah. But you gotta be here anyway.]** The thing hums, before it warps—twists, spins, _moves_ —and then it’s right there at Law’s side, an abyss of power condensed into six and half feet. Beppo makes a small noise, something nervous and choked.

 **[Later, gator.]** It croak-rasps, before it blurs, darting forward so quickly that Law can’t even see which way it’s headed.

“God, you’re such a bastard.” Law grumbles under his breath.

“Everyone!” Hiken no Ace cries, sallow skinned and shaking with the signs of imprisonment and fatigue. “Thank you for loving me!”

There’s a smile on his face. He’s going to die today, and he knows it, and there’s a smile on his face.

“Oh, _**fuck you**_.” Law snarls, even though the thing isn’t even around to receive his vitriol. He doesn’t need to see this. He doesn’t _want_ to see this.

He sees it anyway. He sees it all. There’s blood and the taste of cooked flesh cloying the air, a scream of sheer _anguish_ that rakes its claws down Law’s spine. A lot of bodies scramble, and Law finds himself with a sub full of injured people, most of whom he doesn’t even know.

But Whitebeard is likely dead, Hiken no Ace is _definitely_ dead and Jinbe all but put the catatonic form of Mugiwara into Beppo’s arms before throwing himself back into the chaos.

Triage. Law can do that.

He and Beppo are well oiled machine of a team, and Law manages to lose himself in the repetitive actions of assessing damage and fixing the most threatening of wounds. With the Ope Ope’s ability to provide stasis, no one’s going to _die_ but there’s very little Law can do for every single person.

Patterns are easy, thoughtless enough to give Law’s brain a chance to take a metaphorical breath. Because that was a _War_. The first bloody clash that came with high cost for both sides—there’s a list of dead pirates, most of whom will never be remembered, and Marineford is about to become a new feature of the ocean floor. Nobody’s won shit, but if Law is lucky (hah.), he can make sure that the Marines’ losses outweigh those of everyone else.

That’s the plan, at least.

There’s a flicker of lights, which Law ignores because he’s gotten fairly good at it. The metal of the sub around them groans, which Law also ignores, because he’s literally trying to mend blood vessels and un-rupture organs.

The temperature drops, but Law’s wearing fur and doesn’t have time to stop suturing.

One of the injured begins to shift, then groan, then scream.

Law looks up.

He knew it was the Thing, because these days it always is, but he was hoping it would still be off doing whatever it is that it dragged Law all the way to Marineford to do. 

The lights are less flickering and more flashing, a strobe of bright-dark-bright-dark and in the quick slices of light, Law can see unconscious faces twisted up in discomfort, in pain, in terror.

Law scans the operating hall until he finds a swath of darkness with eyes-and-teeth.

“ _ **Shinku.**_ ” Law snaps, unthinking. The thing doesn’t have a name—or, at least, hasn’t offered one—and normally Law would be fine with going _hey you,_ but this is _important_ —

This is people’s lives on the line, and for all that Law is dead inside and soon to be outside, he’s still a surgeon. He has his standards.

Actively making critical patients _worse_ is decidedly against said standards.

What Law isn’t expecting is the way his voice seems to echo in his own ears. The way the thing freezes, still as a statue. The way every other sound drains away, so much background noise.

 **[Oh ho?]** The thin— _**Shinku**_ muses, voice a hum like an oncoming swarm of locusts. Law’s temples are throbbing.

“I normally don’t give a shit,” Law says. He’s not sure why he’s explaining. He’s not sure when he opened his mouth to speak. _Fuck_ , but his head hurts. “But we don’t fuck around during surgeries. If you can’t keep it”—here, Law gestures at the th— Shinku’s… everything—“together, then go somewhere else.”

A pause. It can’t be more than a few seconds, but to Law it feels like an eternity compressed into one breath. Spots dance in the corner of his vision, but he ignores those with an ease born of years of practice. Shinku ripples, a mirage in the heat, a flag in the breeze.

Law’s breath punches its way out of his chest, sudden and unexpected. When his blurred vision finally clears, Shinku is gone.

Ominous. Definitely a little alarming. Law gives it a second’s thought; not the priority.

What had he been doing? Skin grafts? Sounds right. Law turns back to his patient, mind already moving on. He does not see the eyes hidden in the shadows blink away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly don't remember if i mentioned it anywhere on here, but the [ ] in the title is pronounced "void"—making the full title "you crawled out of the void"—which means yes, i can and absolutely will be using that for wordplay purposes

**Author's Note:**

> i'm actually excited to get this posted! i ran out of excerpts to post on [my tumblr](https://www.manymouths.tumblr.com) so now i gotta wrangle everything into some kinda cohesive narrative


End file.
